Archive | March, 2005

I found a great article on buying foreclosure properties in Japan. David Markle, a long-time resident of Japan shows how it can be done. I have written briefly about this before and have included some information on sites that you can view these properties on. I have yet to go through with a sale on […]

I have been trying to work on another web-site created all in static HTML. It really is time consuming and I feel so unmotivated to work on the site. Therefore I have been looking into a Content Management System. One of the reasons blogging is so easy, is that you can create an entry in […]

An alert reader has pointed out that some of the Japanese text wasn’t showing correctly. I have added the following encoding to every page: meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=Shift_JIS” And I have changed the font to MS Minchul. I hope it is working better now. I think after adding a few more available properties to the […]

I have had the day off today for the day I worked last Saturday. I taken the time to work on my new site and today it has gone live! It still needs a lot more work done on it, but I thought it was good enough to upload so it can (hopefully) start to […]

Tim Clark and Carl Kay have just finished writing a book titled, “Saying Yes to Japan“. It is not released yet, but you can read the first chapter from their website: www.sayingyestojapan.com I agree with everything they wrote, especially what they write about realestate and obtaining finance in Japan. I believe there are so many […]

Last night, I went and took a look at the aparment I mentioned in my previous post. It was tiny to say the least. They were asking 4.3 million yen (about US$43K). I tried to offer 2.5 and the agent just lauged. The apartment block is on rented land, so you have to pay 2000 […]

I have started calling Japanese agents about properties they have advertised on the web. One example is for sale for 5,500,000 yen. Around US$55K. The rent is 55,000 yen per month. It is actually leased to another real-estate agent who subleases properties to foreigners. The property comes out at a 12% return. The agent probably […]

I have been looking on the internet for property in Japan. Some are unbelievably cheap. I know most people don’t agree buying property in Japan is a good idea. Decreasing population, decreasing land values and so on. However, I believe rather than problems, there could be a lot of great opportunities out there. I can […]

I haven’t registered yet, but this sounds very cool. http://buzz.research.yahoo.com/bk/index.html “The Tech Buzz Game is a fantasy prediction market for high-tech products, concepts, and trends. As a player, your goal is to predict how popular various technologies will be in the future. Popularity or buzz is measured by Yahoo! Search frequency over time. Predictions are […]

I am looking for my next property now. I am starting to think again about my strategy. I was thinking that maybe I could buy well in Japan. I have found that there are relatively cheap apartments in Tokyo, but still have excellent rental returns. I figure that I could rent it to a foreigner […]